Korea's Bilateral Trade with Japan and the United States: A Comparative Study

This paper examines the development of Korea's trade structure with Japan and the United States over the past 30 years. Three aspects of the trade structure are investigated: changes in trade patterns, changes in the decomposition of total trade growth, and import and export elasticities. We find that there are major differences between Korea's trade with Japan and Korea's trade with the United States: Korea's intra-industry trade with Japan is higher than that with the United States. The contribution of intra-industry trade to Korea's total trade growth has increased over time. The trade pattern of Korea with Japan has become more similar to that with the U.S. in terms of intra-industry trade while it has diverged from it in terms of inter-industry trade. Also, Korea's import and export price elasticities are larger for trade with the United States than for trade with Japan.